Dream Gifts

by Rachel Creager Ireland

Fifteen or twenty years ago I had a dream in which a man broke into my house, through the basement. I don’t remember now what I did -probably fought him, but when I awoke, I wanted to know more about him, and why he was trying to get into my home.

Later I used hypnotherapy to revisit the dream. Using a standard induction, I went to a room which is kind of my home base in self-hypnosis; from there, I visualized a door, with a sign saying Dream Recall. I opened the door into the dream I’d had earlier, and the man came in, just as he had in the original dream. This time, instead of fighting him, I bypassed my fear and asked him, “What do you want?” He reached out his hand, and in it he held an object which was disc-shaped, made of glass or similar hard, clear material. I thought, ashtray, then saw that it wasn’t an ashtray, but resembled an actual object that one of my housemates had, which she used as an ashtray. I took it in my hand, looked at it briefly, and saw myself hold it to my chest, where it was absorbed into my body. The man had broken into my basement (subconscious) to bring me a gift, which was a shield to protect my heart.

Then the dream dissipated. He didn’t stay to tell me who he was or why he wanted to give me this gift.

It was a relief not to have to be afraid of the intruder after that. I’ve had other intruder dreams over the years, but, for various reasons, have had mixed results with revisiting other dreams. I was only passingly curious why I would need such protection, when I was in a stable relationship, which I’m still in to this day.

I hadn’t thought about that dream for a long time until I had a healing session with my friend Kay Shandler. After the session, Kay told me, “You have a shield on your heart.” It was one piece of information among many she gave me that day, so it wasn’t until a few days later that I realized I’d already known I had this metaphysical object. It was still there, after so many years. When I asked her about it, she didn’t know anything more than that. It was just something she noticed, while looking at my energy field.

Maybe next time I’m on Kay’s table, I’ll ask her to look for more information. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I think there are two elements of this story which are important:

The intruder wasn’t there to hurt me; he was there to bring a gift. I was so fearful and defensive of any kind of help that the only way he could reach me was by sneaking in through the basement. He didn’t threaten me in any way; I acted on fear and fought him before he had a chance to do anything.

I was able to revisit the dream at will. The technique is simple. When you have a dream, it remains in your mind, even if you forget it so completely that it seems hopelessly gone. You only need to know how to access it. If you want to change a dream, you can. Self-hypnosis can be an effective method of retrieving information that you might not otherwise be able to access. For the basics of self-hypnosis, the late Henry Leo Bolduc put some of his books online for free download.